A View From The Brink ... the beach is backwards

Marine heads out on a bike ride to East Coast for injured comrades

 

 

(Originally published in the April, 2012, issue of the Richmond Review newspaper, a community news source serving the Richmond District of San Francisco.)

 

by Thomas K. Pendergast

 

After more than a decade of wars and despite more money, America's veteran services are fighting to stay afloat through a tsunami of damaged men and women filling veterans hospitals and standing in unemployment lines.

According to U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) statistics, medical spending for veterans doubled between 2000 and 2009, from a little more than $20 billion to more than $40 billion each year. By 2010, the number of veterans with service-connected disabilities that were added throughout the past decade was approaching a million, bringing the total number to more than three million veterans with disabilities, nationwide.

The VA says its total funding has increased dramatically, from $67.3 billion in 2005 to $126.9 billion in 2010, even as the total number of veterans has steadily declined by about three million over the last decade.

Perhaps more disturbing is the VA statistic that "Gulf War II" veterans faced a 13 percent unemployment rate in 2009, well above the national average and before the recession bottomed out.

This year, the VA plans on treating a total of 5.6 million veterans, a 1.4 percent increase from 2011. The roughly one million veterans now receiving in-patient treatment is projected to increase by three percent, or about 30,000 people.

"These guys are coming home with life-crushing injuries, double amputee, triple amputee … but the biggest problem that these guys are facing is something that they can't control," says Tim Tuomey, a retired Marine, as he sits outside a Clement Street cafe on a chilly and cloudy afternoon. He holds his dog Reno on a leash, speaking passionately while keeping his eyes on people walking by and going around the black Labrador Retriever.

"Where these guys are really getting hurt is financially. When they come home their wives are having to work two or three jobs. The kids are not being fed. The kid wants to go play football. He should have a new pair of cleats. He should have the gear that he needs. That's where the Semper Fi Fund comes in and fills those financial gaps. It's a great organization from that standpoint alone."

 

Go here for the full article on the Richmond Review newspaper website  --->>>

 

Raven Orders Take Out Dinner

 

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February 20, 2012, Cowell Ranch Beach, California. Photograph by Thomas K. Pendergast

Brown enlarges his role in California's foundering bullet train project

With the $100-billion project at a critical juncture, the governor puts his people in key positions.

 

Roelof van Ark is stepping down as head of the California High Speed Rail Authority. (Bryan Patrick / Sacramento Bee)

 

Ralph Vartabedian and Dan Weikel of the Los Angeles Times newspaper reported that a surprise shake-up of senior leaders at California's bullet-train agency this week was partly Gov. Jerry Brown's response to a growing crisis of confidence and credibility in recent months that has threatened the political viability of the project.

As criticism of the project has intensified, Brown has moved to exert more direct control, installing two representatives on the board of the California High Speed Rail Authority and, on Thursday, playing at least a peripheral role in replacing the authority's chief executive, Roelof van Ark. Several state government sources said Van Ark, an engineering manager and high-speed rail expert, had become personally frustrated and lost the confidence of some key legislators.

Brown is under pressure from unions, engineering firms, big-city mayors and the Obama administration to stabilize and press ahead on a nearly $100-billion project that would be the biggest in California's lofty history of extraordinary public works gambles. With so much at stake, Brown is putting his own people in charge, although their ability to quickly reverse the damage of a wave of negative outside reviews of the project remains unclear.

Go here for the full article at the LA Times website  --->>>

The art of junk at Albany Bulb

For most of the 20th century, the Albany Bulb was a junkyard used as a dumping ground on the east side of the San Francisco Bay.

It was closed in 1984. Then sometime in the 1990s a community of homeless people and artists developed there and began to change the bulb's character.

In 1999 the city of Albany evicted most of the homeless people and artists, however, resistance in the local community and media attention around the Bay Area has made it difficult for the city to remove all the inhabitants and remove the art. The city's plans to renovate the park to a more standard model of grass, trees and sidewalks have gone nowhere.

On Labor Day of 2010, a perfect day to capture images of the Albany Bulb, videographer Rob Riutta went for a walk there with his video camera.

Go here for the full photo collection --->>>